“Her message is one the Boomers would have recognized in the 1960s: Our elders have sold us out,” the magazine said in its article announcing the choice. The previous youngest Person of the Year was the first, aviator Charles Lindbergh, then 25, in 1927.

Thunberg spoke on Wednesday at a United Nations conference in Madrid, telling delegates that rich nations aren’t doing enough to solve the climate crisis. Below are excerpts from her speech.

– “Rich countries need to do their fair share and get down to real zero emissions much faster and then help poorer countries do the same so people in less fortunate parts of the world can help raise their living standards.”

– “Tell me how do you react to these numbers without feeling at least some level of panic. How do you respond to the fact that basically nothing is being done about this without feeling the slightest bit of anger and how do you communicate this without sounding alarmist. I would really like to know.”

– “We indeed have some work to do but some more than others.”

– “Recently a handful of rich countries pledged to reduce the emissions in their countries by so-and-so many percent by this or that date or to become climate neutral or net zero in so-and-so many years. This may sound impressive at first glance but even though the intentions may be good this is not leadership. This is not leading, this is misleading. Because most of these pledges do not include aviation, shipping, imported and exported goods and consumption; they do however give the possibilities of the countries to offset their emissions elsewhere.”

– “Without seeing the full picture we will not solve this crisis. Finding holistic solutions is what the COP should be all about. But instead it has turned into some kind of opportunity for countries to negotiate loopholes and to avoid raising their ambition. Countries are finding clever ways around having to take action.”

– “The biggest danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like real action is happening when in fact almost nothing is being done apart from clever accounting and creative PR.”

The neon green and indigo blue seaplane took off from the Fraser River in Richmond, British Columbia, early Tuesday morning as a small crowd cheered from the dock. The propeller aircraft, a six-passenger de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver prototype, was powered by a magniX magni500 electric motor and piloted by Harbour Air Chief Executive Officer Greg McDougall.

It was a small but significant step in the broader quest to replace fossil fuel-powered aircraft, a mode of transportation increasingly viewed through the prism of global warming.

The test was “far more than the laboratory exercises we’ve seen in the past,” said Robert Mann, the New York-based head of aviation consultancy R.W. Mann & Co. “It’s a real serious, practical test.”

Harbour said it plans to spend the next two years getting its new plane approved for commercial flight. The carrier, which flies to a dozen destinations on the West Coast, has 53 planes and 450 employees spread between British Columbia and Seattle.

There are about 170 different electrically-propelled aircraft programs in development worldwide, up 50% since April 2018, according to consulting firm Roland Berger. Much of that development is in the urban air taxi category and general aviation segments. Current electric technology favors these aircraft, which have lower power needs than large commercial aircraft.

Harbour’s electric Beaver can fly about 60 minutes on one charge. But regulators require aircraft operating under visual flight rules (of the smaller, noncommercial variety) to have the ability to fly 30 additional minutes, which gives Harbour’s new plane a mere 30 minutes of flight time. The relatively short timeline isn’t a problem for the airline, however, said magniX CEO Roei Ganzarski.

“The majority of Harbour Air’s flights are less than 25 minutes in length,” he said, adding that once the plane is certified, the companies will focus on extending the flight envelope.

Those singing the gospel of electric vehicles often point to decreased operating costs. A fossil-fuel powered Beaver burns anywhere between $300 and $400 worth of fuel during a 100-mile flight, said Ganzarski. That same trip in the electric Beaver will cost anywhere from $4 to $10 in electricity, depending on the source, he said.

The electric Beaver is theoretically cheaper to maintain than its combustion engine predecessor, too. Electric motors are sealed units, with a minimum of moving parts. Of course, since there has yet to be a commercial electric aircraft maintenance program, there may be unforeseen expenses.

“The cost of being a pioneer is a relevant problem,” said Mann. “We don’t know the actual costs of operating electric airplanes.”

The near-term is likely to see a generation of hybrid aircraft, pairing electric and conventional power systems along with smaller all-electric craft. Larger, fully-electric aircraft are still about a decade off.

Joby Aviation Inc. is targeting the air-taxi market with a plane that would carry four passengers and travel 150 miles. Uber Technologies Inc. plans to start an electric flying-taxi service, with pilot programs in Dallas, Los Angeles and Melbourne as soon as next year. Israel-based Eviation plans test flights next summer of its all-electric Alice, a nine-passenger plane powered by a smaller version of the magniX motor in Harbour’s Beaver.

“Eviation is excited to congratulate our partner, magniX on its successful test flight of the magni500 propulsion system,” Eviation CEO Omer Bar-Yohay said Tuesday in a statement. “This is a great milestone for electric aviation.”

Siemens, Airbus and Rolls-Royce Holdings are working on a hybrid system, the E-Fan X, that would power a relatively large aircraft. Airbus said it’s targeting an initial flight of its demonstration aircraft in 2021 and expects to eventually phase in new electric technologies by about 2030.

“Airbus has been flying electric for a couple of years,” Mann said. “But they’ve all been laboratory exercises as opposed to practical.”

Consulting firm Roland Berger expects the first flight of such commercial aircraft to occur by 2032. Easyjet Plc has partnered with U.S.-based Wright Electric to develop a full-sized battery-powered airliner within a decade for flights of less than two hours.

While manufacturers and airlines alike plan for an electric future, they’re still dealing with the politics of the present. Europe’s top airlines on Tuesday attacked European Union plans for a planned kerosene tax, part of the bloc’s sweeping new environmental strategy. Airlines called the duty both unnecessary and unfair, arguing that an investment in sustainable fuels and electric planes would ultimately be more effective in reducing carbon emissions.

For its part, Harbour Air is likely to run into some infrastructure issues in the near term, Mann said, since most major airports lack fast-charging capabilities. Ganzarski said they will rely on existing infrastructure for now, but may attempt to build their own renewable infrastructure in the future. The company reported revenue of CAD $69.9 million ($52.8 million) in 2019. McDougall didn’t return a request for comment.

But there are other challenges. Seaplanes, as the name implies, operate from bodies of water rather than land. Unlike meticulously paved and maintained runways, open water is a high-friction surface which requires a far greater amount of energy for a plane to gain enough momentum to take flight.

Salt water is another issue. It’s naturally corrosive, eating away at a plane’s surfaces and parts. Finally, the Pacific Northwest isn’t exactly pleasant in December: Cold temperatures have a negative effect on power density and power conversion in batteries.

“If you were thinking of the toughest case for electric flight, it would probably be a seaplane in salt water,” said Mann.

Speaking at a meeting on Tuesday in Can Tho, Intani Nur Kusuma, senior officer at the Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance Division of the ASEAN Secretariat, said that a declaration on drought would be adopted by leaders at the ASEAN Summit to be held in Vietnam in November next year.

ASEAN has worked closely with relevant sectors to help the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management draft the declaration, she said, adding that drought-related activities need to be integrated into the future action plan of ASEAN.

To mitigate the impact, drought risk assessment and early-warning services should be improved through the sharing of data from space-based technologies.

Risk-financing instruments as well as improvement of people’s awareness of the effects of drought are also needed.

Tiziana Bonapace, director of the Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESACP), told Vietnam News: “Climate change has already happened. Now is the time to adapt instead of fighting it.”

“Southeast Asia is faced with intensification and a changing geography of drought, and of disaster risk in general, as climate change converges with social, environmental and economic stresses.

“Regional co-operation, especially among nations benefiting from the Mekong River, is needed to support national efforts to manage drought through data, technology, innovations, policy and financing options,” Bonapace said.

“The best solution is no single solution but a multi-approach solution,” she added. “Negotiations and dialogue are also needed among all the countries involved based on science and technology and evidence.”

“Our new analysis shows disasters in the region are having more impact than previously thought. Much of the increase is due to the quantification of agricultural drought losses, which was not reported before,” she noted.

Nguyen Truong Sơn, deputy head of the Vietnam Disaster Management Authority, said the Mekong Delta and Central Highlands regions were facing abnormal weather that could be attributed to climate change.

The Mekong River levels in June and July significantly fell compared to previous years, raising concern of exacerbated drought and saline intrusion for the entire Mekong Delta in the 2019-20 dry season.

In the Central Highlands, rainfall in the dry season has dropped considerably compared to previous years, while temperatures have been 0.5-1 degrees Celsius higher than average, sparking serious droughts that have threatened vast tracts of natural forests as well as crops.

Economic losses

No Southeast Asian country can afford to ignore drought when trying to mitigate the economic impact of natural disasters, according to experts.

Bonapace said the significance of economic losses due to agricultural drought was consistent across all countries for which data is available.

“The agricultural losses are highest in Indonesia. In Vietnam, we estimate it to be around US$6.5 billion or 3 per cent of GDP,” she said.

Disasters continue to erode economic gains. Ultimately this means that disasters will limit the ability of economic growth to eradicate poverty.

“According to our study, the economic models show that without disasters, Vietnam is expected to completely eradicate extreme poverty by 2030,” Bonapace said.

According to the Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2019, annual economic losses in Asia Pacific more than quadruple when slow-onset disasters, most notably drought, are added to the region’s disaster risk landscape.

The average annual loss for the region is $675 billion, of which $405 billion, or 60 per cent, is drought-related agricultural losses.

In Southeast Asia, the average annual loss is higher than the Asia-Pacific regional average, reaching $86.5 billion or 3 per cent of the regional GDP.

The average annual loss is highest in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

According to the 2019 Report Ready for the Dry Years report, though starting slowly, drought can have a devastating cumulative impact, striking hardest at the poor and heightening inequality and degrading land, all of which increases the prospects of conflict.

According to the report, there will be many more dry years ahead, and the area affected by drought is likely to shift and expand.

The report was jointly produced by ESCAP and ASEAN as part of their disaster-risk reduction efforts.

Dying river

Experts have recently expressed concern about a number of dams impeding the Mekong Delta’s flow, drying up many parts of the once fast-flowing river and leaving the region facing serious drought.

Le Cong Thanh, deputy minister of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, said an increasing number of dam constructions in the Mekong River were “posing a great burden on the 4,700-kilometre Mekong River basin, especially on the Mekong Delta”.

As a result, millions of people who depend on the river for their livelihoods in Vietnam, China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand will be seriously affected.

The Mekong River Commission, a regional intergovernmental agency that manages the river’s water resources, said that all the “dams in the upstream Mekong River countries contribute to worsening drought in the region”.

The river’s water levels last month recorded their lowest level in 60 years. Other estimates suggest that water levels have dropped to their lowest level in a century, the commission said.

Lower freshwater river levels mean that saltwater levels in the delta could rise, threatening rice-growing and agriculture in general, while agriculture irrigated by the river could suffer if nutrient-rich sediment is blocked from flowing downriver by dams.

The Mekong River, which originates in China and snakes through five Southeast Asian countries, is emerging as a new security flashpoint, experts have warned.

The river begins in the Tibetan Plateau, stretches through much of mainland Southeast Asia, and ends in the Mekong Delta.

The one-day Building Resilience Drought Southeast Asia dialogue was co-organised by the Vietnam Disaster Management Authority, ESCAP, and the ASEAN Secretariat. — VNS